Monday, March 10, 2014

FEAT talk - Work Life Integration

I was invited to talk at F.E.A.T. Canada on Friday night. It was a nice evening, where I got to hear a wide range of speakers talking about how they approach and experience adventure. It was also a great opportunity to catch up with friends who I hadn't seen in months.

Although I sort of "winged" my 7 minute speech (each speaker is given 7 minutes to present their topic), it was loosely based on the following blurb I wrote on the flight over from Calgary. The talk was filmed and will be online soon enough. I figured I'd share the below post for anyone who couldn't attend and wanted to know what I spoke about

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Work life balance is a highly sought after, but also an
extremely tricky concept.

I was reading an article in the Harvard Business Review on
my flight to Vancouver last night and the opening sentence in one of the
articles was“Work/life balance is at best
an elusive ideal and worst a complete myth.” I tend to agree

That same article outlined how certain top executives make
deliberate choices about which opportunities they’ll accept and which ones
they’ll decline, allowing them to engage meaningfully with work, family and
community and leading to more supposedly balanced lives.The critical words in that sentence are “to
engage meaningfully”.

Although it could be argued that some of the people that
they interviewed had warped views on what it means to be meaningfully engaged,
with one of the sources priding himself on choosing to give his child 10
minutes of his time at night rather than choosing to spend those minutes at the
office. I guess that’s better than nothing, but it’s definitely a strange version
of balance and priority in my opinion

As someone who has a lot of hats in the ring, family member,
friend, athlete, adventurer, entrepreneur, lawyer, manager, as well as being
someone who values experience, but who is also very competitive and performance
driven it’s very easy for me to lose myself, lose sight of my loved ones and
to forget why I’m doing certain things. What I’m saying is that I’ve spent a
lot of time trying to find balance and I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded.

I think some of it comes from the fact that I’m trying to do
something that is inherently unbalanced. Mountain ultrarunning, especially at
an elite international level and law are two very high demand activities, so is
being an entrepreneur and being a good friend and family member. They all
demand full engagement to bedone
properly. I like doing things properly.

Trying to balance all these aspects of myself definitely
contributed to the end of my marriage, it lead to me leaving a job at a
corporate law firm where I was making a good salary, doing work I enjoyed with
people I like. It also lead to me getting sick, injured and burnt out on a
sport and activity that I love. I guess the best way to describe it was that I
was stressed out a lot.

I felt like each of these sides of me were constantly
fighting with one another. I would be out running feeling guilty that I wasn’t
working or studying, I’d be at work looking at pictures of places I’d rather
be, I’d be at home with my wife wanting to be in the mountains, I’d be in the mountains
feeling guilty about leaving my wife. I put pressure on myself to succeed
without knowing exactly what success meant to me. It was not a good place to
be. It was the opposite of being mindfully engaged.

It dulled my sense of wonder and appreciation for people and
the world.

I was taking a break from racing, trying to find my
motivation, debating my life choices, running aimlessly and one of the
epiphanies I had during that time is that trying to “balance” things is the
wrong way to look at it because balance means that two things are in opposition
with one another, they are counterweights with nothing in common. I realized
that that wasn’t how I related to these aspects of myself. They weren’t
compartmentalized parts of myself, they were all a part of the whole. They were
also all important to me.

I came to understand that it’s better to look for “work life
integration.” It’s much less internally confrontational and I feel much less
conflicted about the various aspects of who I am. I’m also learning that
approaching things this way allows me to more easily transfer what I do well in
one domain to the others.

More importantly, what this integration style approach does
is that it gives me permission to more mindfully engage in the task I’m doing
because there is no guilt about it. I know why I’m doing certain tasks.

Before, when I was trying to balance things, I could easily
tune out on the activity I was doing, or worse, tune out the person I was with
and the place I found myself. And although I could still function at a high
level that way, I wasn’t getting any real fulfillment from it.

Approaching it from an integrated approach allows me to get
the most out of myself and to have a much deeper appreciation for the places I
go, and the people I meet.

I’m lucky that I have a job that allows me some flexibility
to be me. I’m doing work that I consider meaningful and I’m making a decent
salary. Surprisingly, being a dirtbag pro ultrarunner is not quite as
glamorous or lucrative as it sounds. I'm having fun getting more involved with our trail running company and community and I'm really enjoying exploring new areas, pushing myself hard, meeting new people and trying to connect more meaningfully with friends and family.

I now process work thoughts on my runs and have a deep joy
and appreciation for the places that my feet take me to. More importantly, I
enjoy sharing those places and experiences with others.

I’m feeling more productive and engaged than ever.

My sense of wonder and curiosity is peaked by my work and I
carry that over into my personal conversations and the places I run. I realize
that I have to make the most of the time that I do get to spend in the
mountains and my hunger and desire to train hard and explore is stronger than
ever.

So, in conclusion, don't compartmentalize your life. Accept all aspects of who you are, use the different aspects of your personality to compliment the various activities that you're involved in, engage fully in what you're doing and you're more likely to enjoy the ride.

3 comments:

I appreciate this very much and saw elements of myself in your piece: lawyer, ultrarunner, father, husband, someone who sets high standards and beats himself up when he doesn’t meet those expectations. As I’ve aged a bit, however, I’ve become less interested in integrating aspects of my life that do not sync with my underlying values. I’ve become more interested in seeking out and eliminating those elements in order to simplify my goals. Where I once thought that I could manage a profession that did not compliment my heart, I’m now coming to learn that’s not possible. Recent years have taught me what brings me joy and what I should be focusing on. Thanks, again, for this piece.

Ramblings

My blog, my opinions. I do appreciate you reading though, so thank you.Main topics include, racing, training, gear review, passing thoughts & commentary on things as I see them.Please feel free to comment. I will not remove posts that challenge my opinions, or ones that prove me wrong, but will remove ones that I deem overly offensive (my line is pretty far out there though, so if I remove your post, it is probably psychopathic).

I can also be reached via email at:campbelladam79 at gmail dot com

Silence

To fill in the gaps

A bit of this, a bit of that.
I like to run trails, up mountains and the odd bit of pavement bashing. I also ride bikes with skinny tires and pretty much anything else that gets the ticker going in an outdoor environment.
I am currently general counsel and manage the regulatory department at an environmental engineering firm focusing on water issues in Calgary, AB and have a wide range of interests.